Zero Alternative (20 page)

Walker drew the curtains closed – the sun had just set and darkness was closing in. ‘Don’t worry, most Italians struggle with their accent too.’ He turned around and saw that she had
snuggled under the covers and was shivering. ‘You okay?’

‘Don’t sleep on the sofa. I can defend myself if I need to.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ He switched off the light and headed to the living room, leaving the door slightly ajar. ‘I’ll set up the computers; you try and get some rest.’

‘Okay, boss. Ciao.’

‘Goodnight.’

Walker straightened his back and checked his watch; it was 2.47 a.m. and he had been slaving away for over five hours without a break. Layla had fallen asleep fast and had barely moved since, knocked out by the painkillers and heavy antibiotics. His stomach rumbled and he downed a glass of water, then took a sip from the large bottle of vodka he had bought in Sassari, trying to clear his mind of the myriad useless details that DeepShare was throwing at him with annoying regularity.

DM’s tablet had given him complete access to the Omega server, and his new laptop was working like a dream but the software was complex and Walker was unfamiliar with lots of areas. And he knew very little of the search algorithms that had been his friend’s real area of expertise. But at least there was already a Frankel file running: DM had been trying to trace them, to see if they were indeed the ones watching him.

In its Cyberspace haven, DeepOmega had been digging for weeks on a thorough search for the investment bank’s footprints, producing an enormous amount of results. Too much, really – the data was just overwhelming, and Walker couldn’t make sense of most of it. He knew he should rerun the algos through the preliminaries, to get Deep to filter them again and make the output usable. But he had no idea how to do it. The markets were obviously jittery about Frankel – its stock had dropped over ten per cent in a week. Still, there were no particular rumors online, aside from the usual…

Walker glanced around, a blaring noise breaking his concentration. He hurried to the window, checking outside from the edge of the curtain. The valley was deep in darkness, lit only by a sliver of moonshine. Suddenly a light flashed brightly from the direction of the dirt road that curved back to town, before disappearing again around a bend.

Walker caught his breath and he strained his eyes. A second light popped up just behind the first
one, followed by a loud roar. A truck?
No
–
motorbikes
.

He turned and almost jumped out of his skin as Layla appeared from the bedroom, hair dishevelled from sleep. She immediately went to the computer and closed the laptop, plunging the room into darkness.

‘Car?’

‘Bikes. Two, I think.’

‘Shit.’ She checked around the room. ‘Why didn’t you get a weapon in Sassari?’

Walker searched the tiny kitchen and rummaged in the drawers, finding a couple of old steak knives. ‘This is Italy, not the US. You can’t just show up somewhere and buy a gun.’

He returned to the window and glanced outside. The motorbikes were getting closer, rounding the last turn in the road. The engine noise rose to a searing pitch just as Layla came over to take the blades. A shadow flashed past their window, darker than the night sky. They both recoiled, then realised it was only a bird scared by the clatter.

‘Where’s our car?’

Walker pointed down, just below their room. The old Fiat appeared from the gloom as the first bike turned into the dirt area in front of the converted barn, its headlight beam dancing around. He put up his hand, whispering, ‘Wait.’

‘Why?’

‘They’re making too much noise.’

The second bike approached the parking lot just as the first went into a spin, its back wheel sliding through the dirt and raising a cloud of dust. ‘I think it might be just a couple of kids fooling around.’

Layla didn’t reply. She slipped next to him and checked outside. The driver of the first bike stopped and jumped off with a shout, just as the second went for a wheelie near the reception. His carburetor popped loudly, sounding like a machine gun.

The riders wore no helmets and as the closest turned towards their window Walker glimpsed his pimply, late-adolescent face.

Thank you, God
.

Layla sighed, dropped the knives to the floor and turned on the living room light while he swore, opening the curtains. A couple of seconds later one of the kids shouted something. Walker saw him rush back to his bike, pointing at their apartment. His friend swung around and within a
few moments both of them had disappeared back towards Sadali.

Walker closed the heavy curtains and looked across the room, just as Layla was picking up his bottle.

‘Vodka?’ she asked, her voice shaken.

‘Please.’

He brought her a glass and they shared a drink. Her eyes were swollen from sleep and her cheeks flushed. Walker exhaled and reopened his laptop, logging off DeepShare. ‘That was unpleasant,’ he grimaced.

‘Very. Are you sure about this place?’ Layla leant back on the table and he noticed that goosebumps pimpled her long legs.

‘Nobody knows we’re here. Look – it was only a couple of teenagers, and they’re probably wetting their pants as we speak…’ Walker tried to smile and lit a cigarette. ‘We’ll be fine, and I need some quiet time to work anyway.’

‘Okay, I’ll believe you,’ she shrugged. ‘But no more of these shenanigans while I sleep, please.’

‘I promise.’

She glanced at his computer. ‘Did you find anything?’

‘Not yet.’ He finished his drink, enjoying the burning sensation as the tension receded. His heartbeat still felt too fast and his head spun a little from the adrenaline. ‘It’s not going to be easy.’

Layla stepped nearer, looking into his eyes. ‘Anything I can do to help?’ She was very close, and her pupils seemed to sparkle.

Walker opened his arms just as her mouth came up and they kissed hard, their tongues entwining and probing. Her arms rose to his neck and she let her body slide into him, pressing into his chest. Being careful of her wound, he caressed her back down to the waist, then bit gently on her tongue. His left hand slid under her T-shirt, along the ribs and up her warm skin to cup her breast. She pushed against him, her legs straddling his knee and holding on for a second or two. Then she slipped away.

Her hands went up, she took a step back and looked at him, her eyes cloudy. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ she said.

Walker stared at her, surprised. ‘What?’

‘I’m… this is not right.’

‘Why?’

Layla hesitated, her chin dropping as she glanced at the floor, then at the window. ‘I’m not… ready for this, Scott.’

Walker swore silently, biting on his cheeks. Why not? It had felt right, very right. It had felt like the best thing in a long time. He swallowed, looking away from her, searching for the cigarette he had dropped.

‘Fine.’ He picked the Marlboro up, took a long drag and extinguished it. ‘I guess there’s other stuff to take care of.’

‘It’s not that… I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ Walker exhaled, realising his tone had been sharper than he had intended. ‘Really.’

‘Thank you.’ Layla nodded and headed back towards the bedroom. ‘It’s very late, you should get some sleep as well.’

‘Yeah.’

She disappeared into the darkness and Walker switched the living-room light off, then lit another cigarette. A minute later he shrugged and went into the bedroom to pick up a pillow and a discarded blanket.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’ll sleep on the sofa.’

Layla sat up on the bed, a darker shadow in the blackness. Walker could smell the faint traces of her cinnamon perfume. ‘You don’t have to.’

‘I think it’s better this way.’

She sighed. ‘I guess you’re right.’

‘I
know
I am.’

PART TWO – EXPLORING THE DEEPNESS

‘
History is full of people and institutions that grew to positions of supremacy only to come crashing down
. Very often hubris – a sense of invincibility fed by uncontested power – was their undoing. Sometimes, however, the rise and the fall was due more from the unwarranted expectations of those around them.
A case in point is that over the last few years, the central banks of the largest advanced economies have assumed an almost-dominant policymaking stand
.’

Ludwig Van Boren, formerly one of the most important investment managers in the world

Chapter Eleven

Plan B

Walker spent the entire day diving into DeepShare’s research on Frankel. He’d run the machine overnight, trying to trace the bank’s trading activities in the markets for the past few months. A lot of the stuff was impossible to locate, dealt in Dark Pools or over-the-counter with only confidential paper trails, but Omega had still managed to find some gold nuggets in the Exchange data.

A serious flag had appeared, and he sniggered as he tried to piece together its meaning. He had no idea how DM had managed to sneak his software’s probes so deeply in the market’s archives, but the frenzied aspect of some transactions was unmistakeable. Frankel Schwartz was in big trouble – you didn’t deal in such sizes, and with apparent randomness and counter-logic, unless something was going wrong in your books. Unless you had a serious hole below the waterline and were desperately trying to keep your ship afloat, patching leaks up here and there. It wasn’t what he had hoped for, but maybe…

Satisfied, he leaned back in his chair and turned to Layla, who was typing something on her netbook. She glanced up without stopping. ‘You’ve been working hard today.’

‘I’m in the middle of something complicated.’

‘Good complicated?’ She closed the computer and walked over to him. Some colour had returned to her cheeks and the wound was starting to heal, without signs of infection. ‘What are you trying to do, exactly?’

Walker sipped his coffee and grabbed one of the last few pastries on the table – earlier, Miss Sanna had brought over a ludicrous number of croissants and Seadas, typical Sardinian honey pastries, and had also left them an old kettle along with some Nescafé and milk. Layla had appreciated and devoured several sweets in a flash, hardly pausing for breath.

‘I’m not sure, really. DM had unleashed DeepOmega onto Frankel, and most of the results are interesting, but flimsy.’

‘Why?’

‘The software sees an uncertainty node in the company, and serious vulnerability. The problem is that Omega can’t tie Frankel to our events yet – its probability tree folds in the right direction,
but…’

‘It’s not something that would stand up in court.’ Layla grabbed his pastry and finished it.

‘Once a thief…’ Walker glared at her and lit a cigarette. ‘That’s the point. I don’t think the police could use any of it. It’s not how Omega works – it just gives potentials, and turning points. I need something harder… names, connections for it to work on. And I don’t have any. Which means I’m also scheming to put in place a secondary option, a Plan B, if you wanna call it that.’

‘Plan B?’

‘Yes. But it’s complicated, and very hard to pull off. I’d rather just nail Frankel with DM’s death and be done with it.’

Layla glanced at her laptop, then looked back up at him. ‘Names, connections. That’s exactly what I’m trying to get for you.’

‘Are you?’

She caressed the back of his head, letting her hand linger for a second. Then she moved back towards the sofa and half-smiled. ‘I’ve been in touch with my fixer, and a few other people I know. Maybe someone can figure out who the big Australian is.’

‘That would help…’

Walker’s mobile phone rang, and they both turned to look at it. He picked up the handset, checking the screen. ‘It’s Luigi.’ He turned on the speakerphone.

‘Pronto?’

‘Hi mate, my brother tells me your new passport is ready.’

‘Great. How do I pick it up?’

‘One of their people is going to meet you tomorrow around two p.m., at the Santu Antine Nuraghe near Torralba. Salvo, apparently. Do you know him?’

‘Sort of.’
Wonderful. Such a lovely guy
.

‘You must go alone.’

Walker groaned. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

‘One day you’ll have to tell me the full story,’ Luigi said. ‘And by the way, how’s the lady? Do you need to see the doctor again?’

‘She’s okay, I think.’ Walker glanced at Layla, who shook her head. ‘She’ll be fine.’

‘Cool.
In bocca al lupo
, Yours.’

‘
Grazie
. And tell your brother to fuck off.’

Plan B. Could it really work?
Walker returned to his laptop and put the finishing touches on a new message for Mosha, this time about Deep’s take on the next European Central Bank meeting. The market expected interest rates to remain unchanged but Omega saw a very high probability of a rate cut, against all odds. The Serb had replied a couple of hours earlier, quite impressed by the software’s success in forecasting the mess at the pharmaceutical company, and now wanted to know how it had come up with the information.

As Walker had expected, the hedge-fund manager seemed a lot more interested in making money than in reporting him to the police, so he had started explaining DM’s creature and its almost magical capabilities. And if the ECB event went right, the big fish should swallow hook, line and sinker. He reread the email and attached some background data from Deep, finally firing the message off.

‘What’s a Nuraghe?’

Walker glanced up, stood and joined Layla at the window, checking the darkening sky. A few clouds were gathering near the higher mountains, though the weather forecast still predicted a balmy few days.

‘It’s an ancient ruin, some type of cemetery built by the pre-historical Sardinians. There are some astonishing complexes around the island, from four thousand years ago. Santu Antine is one of the most famous, a great tourist spot – and busy.’

‘Sounds like a good place for a drop. Anyhow…’ She turned away, heading for the bedroom. ‘Those pastries were gorgeous, but I’m starving now. Can we go into town and buy some food?’